


My Mother the Spy

by wendelah1



Category: Charade (1963)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 13:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6330532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We never got tired of hearing the story of Our Mother the Spy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Mother the Spy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



No matter how many times our father told it, we never got tired of hearing the story of Our Mother the Spy. Mother would get us settled into bed and kiss us goodnight. "Good night, Adam, Alex, and Peter. I'll see you in the morning." Once she headed back to the kitchen for her nightcap, we pounced on Father.

"Tell us again, Papa," Adam demanded. "We want to hear about how Mother caught the bad men." Adam was the eldest child, and quite bossy. 

"That old yarn? The one about how your mother proposed to me three times in as many days?" Father suggested, with a faraway look in his eyes. 

Adam put one arm over his forehead and groaned. "NO. No mushy stuff."

"That part is gross," Alex agreed. Alex was a year younger than Adam (and a year older than me) but he was just as bossy.

"You can leave out the kissing, too," I chimed in. 

"Fine, Peter. No kissing. Where do you want me to start?" Clearly, our father was a saint.

"Start with when Mother ran away from you into the metro station!" The chase scene was exciting. That was the part I loved best. 

"No. I want to hear about how you took a shower with your clothes on!" Alex stood up and bounced on the bed, stopping after Father glared. 

"Start with when you first met her, at the ski resort." Adam liked to keep everything orderly. (He's the one who became an accountant.) 

"At the very beginning? It's going to take too long if I start there. Your mother has to go to work in the morning and she won't go to bed until I do." 

By the time we outgrew bedtime stories, we'd heard many different versions of Our Mother the Spy, some of which were so outlandish that I wondered if my father wasn't getting ideas from the James Bond movies so popular at the time. 

Regardless of where the story began, it always ended the same way. "Oh, I love you, Adam… Alex… Peter… Brian… whatever your name is," Mother said to Father, once the bad guys were all taken care of, and he had finally proposed to her. 

"Your mother is the kindest, most beautiful woman in the world," Dad told us. "Her only fault is being too trusting of other people." 

"That's how she ended up married to the Worst First Husband in the World," said Adam, with Alex and I nodding agreement.

"That's right. Your mother's first husband was a very bad man indeed but she didn't know that about him. She loved him, so she trusted him. She fell in love with me so she trusted me, too." 

"That worked out okay, didn't it, Papa?" 

"Yes, it worked out swell, Peter. As long as we do everything we can to deserve her trust and make her happy, we'll all live happily ever after."

And so we did. Father had already retired from the State Department when I started kindergarten. The following year Mother went back to her job as a translator. There was no reason why she couldn't work and have a family, he explained. It sounds obvious now but it raised some eyebrows at the time. 

We loved growing up in France, but attending college in the United States, we loved it even more. After graduating, we all stayed. My brothers settled on their careers and got married. I wasn't thrilled with my career in marketing but I wasn't in a rush to change.

Mother was only 59 when she was widowed for the second time. After Father's funeral, I stayed to help her get resettled. She planned to keep working and remain abroad. My brothers wanted me to talk her into coming back to the United States. It seemed improbable. She loved Paris.

On Sunday we would move her from the spacious apartment where I'd grown up to a smaller one in the same arrondissement. Possibly the landlord had a crush on my mother, as the rent was cheap considering the location. Her new apartment consisted of one odd-shaped living area, a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom, and a separate W.C. We had our work cut out for us. 

Going through my father's things was harder than I'd expected. His gold watch went to Adam. Alex took his monogrammed cufflinks and the Burberry trench-coat I'd had my eye on. Mother gave me his signed first edition of _For Whom the Bell Tolls_.

But I wanted something he'd worn. I had my mother's slender build so his suits wouldn't fit. I hated neckties. 

"What about a scarf?" My mother stood in the bedroom doorway. She looked sad and her eyes were reddened. 

I stood up and put my arms around her. "I don't remember Father wearing them."

She shrugged. "No. I suppose not. He'd risk pneumonia rather than make his neck look fatter. I gave him several, thinking he'd change his mind." 

"You pick for me." I sat back on the bed. "Tell me how you and Father met."

She looked bemused. "It was your favorite bedtime story. You were too little to understand half of it."

"So was any of it true?"

"Yes. Well, except for my being a spy. The danger was real." She looked thoughtful. "It was a terrible thing—finding out that my first husband was a stranger—and a crook! But if it hadn't happened that way, I wouldn't have met your father. If we hadn't faced the danger together, we might not have fallen in love."

"I'd...never looked at it like that." 

"I thought I was unluckiest woman in the world when I found out about Charles's betrayal. But meeting your father changed my life. I hope he knew that," she said, her voice breaking.

"You know he did—and he felt the same way about you. Mother, let's take a break from packing. I want to hear your story again. Tell me about My Mother the Spy."

**Author's Note:**

>  _Charade_ is in the public domain and can be [downloaded at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/Charade19631280x696).


End file.
